AME Zion Church : Open House

See the inside of one of the oldest African American Churches in the Hudson Valley and learn the history and experience the enduring legacy of AME Zion Church.

For generations, AME Zion church has served as a place of worship, community, education, advocacy, and hope within African American community in Newburgh. The denomination’s roots reach back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when Black Methodists in New York sought greater opportunities for spiritual leadership, self-determination, and community life.

This local church has produced bishops, several general officers but also hosted abolitionists such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass, an ordained minister in the A.M.E. Zion Church; Civil Rights leaders, and many other productive agents of change.

The A.M.E. Zion church was also known as The Freedom Church, and could boast members such as Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, who visited A.M.E. Zion in Newburgh to rejoice in 1870 when slavery was effectively ended and voting rights given to black men.

Listen to Tashae Smith's Sound and Story about Frederick Douglass and AME Zion Church or do the self-guided tour of African American History in Newburgh..